Short-sighted sites like m-w.com and Wikipedia limit their definition of a muse as any of the nine sister goddesses in Greek mythology who presided over song, poetry, and the arts and sciences. Things have evolved since the day of the Zeus excuse. (Evidence)

Each of the writing designs below is available in an assortment of shirt styles, greeting cards, coffee mugs, and other items. This means you can create a writing gift set with a t-shirt and a matching coffee mug, for example. — Click on the images in the middle or right columns to navigate to complete index for that design. (Each T-Shirt design image link will open a new window to the index for that design.)
Has your muse gone incognito disguised as a man to fool you? Or is he the child of a muse? Or maybe he evolved to that state. Regardless of how he got that way, if you’re abused by a muse who amuses himself by avoiding you, then you’ll love these blue muse abuse designs!	Shop for this Design	Shop for this Design
If you’re abused by a muse who amuses herself by avoiding you, then you’ll love these blue muse abuse designs! (Check out the muse’s designer dress!)	Shop for this Design	Shop for this Design
Does your muse abuse you — like make you think of things like the color mauve and then skip out on you? If you’re abused by a muse who amuses herself by avoiding you when you need her, then you’ll love these mauve muse abuse designs!	Shop for this Design	Shop for this Design
Does your muse like to make you come up with an idea, promptly make you forget it, and then leave? If you’re abused by a muse who amuses herself by avoiding you when you need her, you’ll love this these pink muse abuse designs!	Shop for this Design	Shop for this Design
Does it drive you crazy that because of today’s emphasis on non-sexist language your muse keeps posing as a non-gender-specific, gender-neutral influence? Then you’ll love these brown muse abuse designs!	Shop for this Design	Shop for this Design

You can find other Blue Rose Bouquet writing gift ideas designs on the Writing Woes Gift Gear page.

You can see other designs by Pamela Rice Hahn at TShirtCollections.com and Chronic-Illness.org.

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Angela’s Ashes
Angela’s Ashes is available in:

HARDCOVER

AUDIO CD

Written (and read) By
Frank McCourt

‘Tis sure that only the Irish could take a childhood filled with lack, poverty, and drunkenness and make the world smile. Frank McCourt tells of his youth in the lanes of Limerick with a lyrical, lilting voice and a knack for detail that touches the heart.

The richness of the book is magnified in the author’s reading and singing of it. His voice gives life to the Irish accents, expressions, and songs. The author sings of Kevin Barry and Roddy McCauley, just as his father did after drinking the dole and rousing his toddler sons from sleep and making them promise to die for Ireland.

Who wouldn’t cry, a t’all a t’all, when he speak of the slight of the British, and “all they did to them for 800 years when they wouldn’t give you the stream of their piss?” Maybe just an Irishman, who, as his mother Angela insists, has his bladder near his eye.

Pinched between the typhus and the galloping consumption, is the anchor of the Catholic Church with whom “ruing the day” and “everlasting doom” were sure signs that God loved you. In fact, the reader takes solace in the book’s only flaw, McCourt’s inclination to dwell on his adolescent tendency toward masturbation or “interrupting himself with the excitement.” Surely the agonizing weekly confession of this impure deed was harsh enough payment for an editor’s oversight.

You laugh and cry for young Frankie, whether he is throwing up the Body of Christ in his grandmother’s backyard following his First Communion, or lying in a hospital ward and recalling the first time he heard the words of Shakespeare, who writes so beautifully that he, like McCourt, “must surely have been Irish.”

Angela’s Ashes
Angela’s Ashes is available in:

HARDCOVER

AUDIO CD

Written (and read) By
Frank McCourt

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Review Submitted by:Jodi Cornelius

Creating Your Own Web Graphics with Paint Shop Pro by Andrew Bryce Shafran and Dick Oliver is an excellent book for novice and expert Web designers alike. If you’ve ever wanted to create graphics, be they .jpg or .gif, and didn’t know where to start, this book is for you. If you want to learn how to create or make .gifs that are transparent, this book tells you how, step-by-step.

Shafran and Oliver tell you which graphics work best and how to use them on your Web pages. They give you the pros and cons between .jpgs and .gifs. Each graphic has its own properties and Creating Your Own Web Graphics with Paint Shop Pro goes into detail about each graphic type and how, when, and where to use it on your Web page.

Do you want to manipulate your graphics so they do what you want them to? Creating Your Own Web Graphics with Paint Shop Pro includes a CD-ROM that includes a shareware version of Paint Shop Pro Ver 4 (the version included in this copy of the book — later printings may include newer versions) and other tools you need to create exciting Web pages. These programs include GIFCon, Lview Pro, Map Edit, Map This!, and Web Hotspots. Plus it includes many Web graphic samples, with buttons, lines, and directional controls. You can manipulate these graphics or use them as a starting point for your own graphics.

Another chapter shows you how to scan and enhance photos, and also includes information on filters, deformations, and special effects.

One of the best chapters, though (in my opinion), is the chapter on GIF animations. It teaches you how to create animations and implement them in your pages. Animations are great provided you use them sparingly.

There are also a ton of URLs to find more graphics, and the newest versions of the software. If you have ever wanted to create your own graphics or work with existing graphics, this book is for you. This book is a “10″ in this reviewer’s opinion. I highly recommend this for any tech library!

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Here on Earth
By Alice Hoffman

For those over 40 who still wonder about that one person from long ago and why it never worked out, Here on Earth lets you know. March Cooper returns to the rural Massachusetts town she left as a girl without her first love, who left her staring out an icy window for three years before she moved to California and married Richard Cooper.

It’s the funeral of her nanny, Judith Dale, that brings March back, carrying more emotional baggage than the red-eye express in the form of her rebellious, spike-haired 15- year-old daughter, Gwen, and an unrequited love for Hollis. In the author’s own unique style of poetic prose lays bare the tale of what happens when a fantasy love becomes a reality.

By the author’s own admission, Here on Earth is a darker novel than her others. In fact, in the middle of it, she put it aside and dashed off Practical Magic, just to get a break from the novel’s heaviness.

As the relationship evolves between March and Hollis, it becomes evident why he smelled of “some other scorching scent which March would later come to believe was anger.” And also, why it’s always a mistake to say, “Don’t you dare walk out that door.”

The surrealistic picture that Hoffman paints of reality comes from her magnification of the details. The dragonfly caught in your hair, the foxes disappearing and meeting in a circle in the depths of the woods, the horse that would kill a man but die for a teenage girl, and how March’s brother — the Coward — lives in the marshes, and, despite his drinking, was the only one who knew the truth from the beginning. For him, and the choice he makes, she says, “Do what you want, do what you will, do what you have to, do what you think you cannot.”

This tales lacks some of the magic and spirituality of her other novels. The depth of the subject doesn’t lend itself to “angels landing between your shoulders blades.” It strains the fabrics of the words that weave the story of love that wasn’t meant to be, and what occurs when two people decide to make it happen anyway.

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As thrillers go, Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter has to be an “11″ on a scale of 1-10.

Here’s the plot. A retired sniper, living in the Arkansas moutains by himself, is framed as the shooter who takes a shot at the President. The FBI and the Secret Service are after him, and they have him IDed at the site of the shooting, they have his rifle, and they have his notes on shooting sites where the Prez will be.

The guys who framed him are also after him because he knows who they are, and he just plain doesn’t have a friend in the world.

Given this scenario, the rest of the plot is all about how he gets out of this jam — because all along, you know he’s innocent!

But that’s the icing on the cake, folks: the cake itself — the truly masterful way in which the story is told — does nothing but define the thriller genre. Again on a scale of 1-10, I put plot at 9, characters at 9, pacing at 10, atmosphere at 11 … you get the idea.

And don’t forget: my 1-10 is a *log* scale.

Reviewer bio:

Dave aka bazillion is a professional used sound-effects salesman who makes his home in Los Angeles, a small fishing village on the US west coast. He reads voraciously and writes with a sense of style that can only be called “strange.”

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Murdering Mr. Monti
by Judith Viorst

Brenda, a thrice-weekly advice columnist, plots to off Mr. Monti because of his threat to her favorite son. (Mr. Monti doesn’t approve of Brenda’s son dating his daughter, so forget any chance of him marrying her.)

The way Brenda rationalizes her behavior throughout the book is hilarious. The timing of her self-justified indiscretions adds precious touch(es). One of the best good times, just for an escape, books I’ve read in the last couple of years.

A devilish, delightful farce.

The book is funny. I loved it.

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Thirty years ago, in Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey first introduced readers to the world of Pern and the flying dragons that protected it from the ravages of Thread. In the ensuing years she has written over a dozen books set in that same world–each one giving her readers more insight into the people and dragons that populate Pern. The world of Pern and the threat of the Red Star have become mainstays in the science-fiction genre.

MasterHarper Robinton, a much-beloved supporting character in many of the other books, is now given his own volume in The MasterHarper of Pern. In this book we are shown Robinton’s life, from his birth all the way until the beginning of the Pass when the dreaded Thread is due to fall again.

Robinton is a musically-talented child, the son of MasterComposer Petiron, and MasterSinger Merelan, and conflict is seen almost immediately as Robinton’s father becomes jealous of the attention that Merelan gives the young Robinton. Throughout the book we see the development of Robinton’s musical and diplomatic prowess, even as the relationship between father and son disintegrates. During this time there is also a great deal of upheaval in the world of Pern, with the approach of the Red Star and the disbelief of many that Thread will ever fall again. Adding to the mix is the ruthless Fax, who intends to carve an empire out of the northern continent. Robinton finds himself at the heart of the conflict and ends up shaping the destiny of Pern as only the MasterHarper can.

Fans of the Pern books will enjoy this prehistory of the world we were first introduced to in Dragonflight. We are given an insight into the character of Robinton that we only had glimpses of previously. We share his joys and heartbreaks, and his passion to see the people of Pern protected both from Thread and conquerors such as Fax.

Another delight for fans familiar with the Pern books is to see characters as children, who later grow to positions of power as the Pass comes. Characters who were previously only referred to in passing, such as F’lar and F’nor’s father, and Lessa’s parents now have life breathed into them. Throughout the developments of the fifty years before the Pass begins with its deadly rain of Thread we’re allowed to see what it is that causes these characters to be so thoroughly convinced that the threat of Thread is a genuine one. The last chapter of the book comes across as a bit contrived as it ties into the beginning of Dragonflight, but overall it is an entertaining read that is sure to satisfy the many fans of the Anne McCaffrey and her Dragonriders of Pern.

Other books by Anne McCaffrey:

Dragon Harper

Dragondrums (Book 3, sequel to Masterharper of Pern)

Dragonsinger (Book 2, sequel to Masterharper of Pern)

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I must admit my reasons for buying and beginning to read War and Peace by Count Leo Tolstoy, were superficial at first. My thoughts were, “Well, I’ll be able to say I’ve read War and Peace.” Thereby making myself an instant intellectual, of course. As I began to read, however, a strange, deepening realization began to take hold within me. This was a book that was going to change my perspective on life.

The novel takes the reader into the lives of a vast array of characters. We see the pettiness, vanity, hatreds, and self-promotions of the members of the jaded Russian Court of Tsar Alexander, and those who know them. Life is carefree in Moscow and St. Petersburg, with the hardest decision to be made is what time to appear at the Ball, or whom they should invite to their latest soiree.

The catalyst of the story is Napoleon Bonaparte who invades Russia, thus beginning the change in these peoples’ lives. Suddenly, life isn’t so carefree, and the most basic human endeavor descends upon them. The battle of survival. Some are fighting in battle, others are pretending to be fighting in battle, and still others are desperately awaiting news of their country, friends, and loved ones from the front, all while attempting to survive on very little resources.

Tolstoy beautifully shows the human struggle with not only the horrors of war, but also the battles within ourselves that allow, or prohibit, us from becoming what we want or don’t want to attain. One example of this is Pierre Bezhukov, the bastard child of a wealthy aristocrat. He is aimless and insecure in the beginning, but tries to come to terms with what he thinks are wrongs done him by others in the past. Pierre is the key character in the novel, in my opinion. He comes to a realization that most should grasp early in their lifetime. When you think back on War and Peace, Pierre will be the character you will remember most.

Intermittently, Tolstoy blatantly questions the value of historians, and their accuracy. This will leave you with a fresh outlook on the whole spectrum that is history. The veil will be lifted from your eyes so to speak. Allowing you to decide for yourself what you will believe, by questioning who wrote that part of history, and their motivations behind it.

As you read the last page and set the book down you’ll ask yourself the inevitable question. “What did I learn from this book?” Well, that’s a hard question to answer since most people extract different meanings, and capture different enlightenments from literature. But, I know without a doubt, you will gain one insight from this masterpiece. It’s the one thing this entire novel tries to convey to the reader. Everything relating to peoples’ lives, no matter how minute, comes down to one common denominator. Humanity.

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Worst Fears
by Fay Weldon

Alexandra, an actor starring in a production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, is summoned home due to forty-nine-year-old Ned’s sudden death from a massive heart attack. Weldon uses an interesting disjointed story-telling style to expose Alexandra’s husband’s infidelities. During the course of the book, Alexandra works her way through the devastating realizations that nothing about her marriage was as it seemed.

Alexandria’s journey of self-discovery is both painful and poignant.

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